


Precious and Fragile Things

by Ael_tRlailiiu



Series: Black Swans [1]
Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-10
Updated: 2012-09-10
Packaged: 2017-11-13 23:13:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/508757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ael_tRlailiiu/pseuds/Ael_tRlailiiu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Six weeks after Loki's invasion, Pepper gets kidnapped. The Tower is under attack by someone who knows far too many of SHIELD's technological secrets. The Avengers are still figuring out how things are going to work among themselves, but they aren't going to stand for this. </p><p>Mild violence, swearing, mad science, and kidnapping. (Did I just put Pepper in a refrigerator?)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is a thing: my first real fic ever. It has plot and stuff. The villain is original with me, mainly because I wanted to keep this MCU-tidy and there aren't a whole lot of villains there yet. I did not intend to commit angst, but, well... Tony. The title is from a Depeche Mode song. Yes, I am old. Many thanks to Indigo Starblaster for the beta.

Captain America opened his apartment door to see a familiar ruff of dark hair, mirrored sunglasses, and a grin on his doorstep.

“Captain.”

“Mr. Stark.” It had turned into a joke, somehow, Steve wasn't sure how that had happened. “Something I can do for you?” He glanced at the wall clock and realized that it was later than he thought. He weighed asking _why are you wearing sunglasses in the middle of the night_ , weighed the likelihood of the answer being comprehensible, and decided against. Tony was in the jeans and t-shirt that had apparently become the daily uniform of all classes in this century (though Tony's were probably tailored), the arc reactor a faint glow behind the fabric.

“This place looks sufficiently like a doghouse. My other girlfriend is sleeping off a science hangover, so I thought I'd bother you instead, I know you don't sleep.”

“You know he is going to kill you if he ever hears that? Bruce, that is, will literally kill you. I don't think a jury would convict.”

“I've gotten away with worse.”

“Uh-huh. Doghouse?” Steve stepped aside to let him in. “What'd you do?”

“I have no idea. These things happen.” He dropped onto the couch and looked around over his shades as if he was considering buying the place. “Thift-store chic, still? I thought they were paying you?”

“They are. I don't have many needs.” He had one large-ish living room/kitchen, a bedroom, a glorified closet that qualified the place as a two-bedroom, and yes, some thrift-store furniture. He didn't see any reason to rush around accumulating. Things would come as and when they were needed.

“Cultivate some wants, for God's sake.”

Steve shook his head, amused. He turned on the TV—people these days seemed to expect its presence—and tossed the remote to Tony, who caught it and ignored it in favor of checking something on his phone, wordless indication that he didn't expect entertainment, just company, and Steve could go back to whatever he had been doing.

Steve sat back down at the table. Most of it was covered by an open book. One of the few things he had bought was an atlas, the kind that he had only ever seen in libraries before. As he relearned the world, he had found that a literal map gave method to his exploration, made graspable the difference between now and then. The internet was fine, the internet was wonderful, but thick, glossy paper was a better starting point. Sometimes photographs and videos were _too_ immediate.

“Ever been to Madagascar?” he asked.

“Not that I remember, but could have happened.”

“What've you been up to, this week?”

“Taking things apart. Occasionally putting them back together.” He glanced at the open windows, which Steve took to mean it was more of the Chitauri stuff that he was working on, something not even Tony would chatter about in such an insecure location. The ceiling fan turned lazily, stirred the sticky summer air—that hadn't changed. Most of the other units sprouted air conditioners from every window. Steve preferred immersion, the sounds and sensations and yes, even the smells of the living world to that white-noise hum. Other than the low mutter of the television, quiet fell.

Somehow in the weeks since Loki, they had gotten to this place. Steve had mentioned it once to Natasha in passing, just one of the many things that he wouldn't have predicted.

“And this surprises you why?” she asked.

“It's just a little weird. We didn't exactly get a good start.” Howard Stark's son was obviously not predisposed to like Steve in the least even without Loki's influence, and yet, he had turned up with no particular excuse to do so and just... been there.

(On reflection, Steve had been more surprised that Howard got married than that he had left a kid behind at some point, or that he was dead. He _was_ surprised it had been something as tame as a car crash, though.)

Natasha had been in a good mood. “The psychiatrist is in. Got a nickel?”

“Yeah, why?”

She shook her head. “Never mind, the first one's free. You don't want anything from him.”

Whatever the reason for it, it looked like once in a while he was going to end up with Tony Stark hanging out on his couch until either his natural restlessness got the better of him or (tonight) he figured that going home wouldn't result in anything being thrown at him.

Steve would happily admit to zero understanding of how those two worked, but then he had only met Pepper a couple of times. He worked his way through most of the Indian Ocean, switching between the map and the laptop. Occasionally he glanced over at the couch, where a blue glow had taken over part of the room. The field was full of tiny bright spots. Tony appeared absorbed in adjusting their position with a slim stylus.

“What is that?” Steve asked.

“Stars.”

“Going to build one?”

“Not this week. JARVIS was already out, so I don't have any record from the far side of the portal. Trying to recreate the starfield and figure out where it was.”

“Couldn't we ask Thor next time he shows up?”

“What fun would that be?”

Steve had to concede that point, and went back to his own pursuits until Tony announced, “Three o'clock and all's well, or at least no messages telling me not to come back except to pack. So. Do you want voice command activated on that thing? Listening to you try to type is causing me actual pain.”

“I should learn how. Seems like one of those things everyone knows these days.”

“It's one of those things everyone thinks they know, and does badly. Not their fault, keyboard designs are shit. You'd make quite a trophy for SHIELD's secretarial pool.”

“Uh-huh. Call if you need a rescue from the Tower, princess.”

Unrepentant grin and sunglasses in place, Tony went on his way, and Steve decided that a couple hours of sleep would not go amiss.

It was not quite forty-five minutes later that his phone rang. He saw who it was, rolled his eyes and almost didn't answer it.

“I was _kidding_ , you—”

“We have a problem,” Tony said.

  
  


*

At this hour on a weekday, the streets were nearly deserted, and Tony _still_ couldn't drive at anything resembling a reasonable speed. Also, air should not be the temperature of soup. Maybe a trip back west was in order. A road trip, even, it had been twenty-odd years. Get away from things for a bit.

Last time he tried to take a vacation had been Monaco. Maybe not, then. Still, maybe a weekend, just the two of them, sort out... whatever was wrong. He thought they had been getting the hang of this. Then Loki had happened, and things had been insane for a couple of weeks, and then Pepper had started snapping more than usual. And insisting that everything was fine.

Tony parked under the tower and gave the car a consoling pat. Maybe there was an equivalent to dog-walkers for miserable, city-bound vehicles? He stopped the elevator at the lobby to say hi to “Loki”—the shattered floor tiles in their brushed-steel frame usually cheered him up, but on reflection, maybe he should have conceded that argument to Pepper. A daily reminder that she had attached herself to a man who was likely to get killed on live television someday probably wasn't helping anything.

Except she _knew_ that. It hadn't ever been theoretical; she had been there for the start of the ride. Half of the important moments in their relationship had happened amid smoking rubble. He had realized he loved her ten feet from the corpse of a man who had just tried to kill both of them. Hadn't quite gotten around to saying that bit out loud before she shot him down with considerably more effectiveness than the US Air Force had shown, and it had been six months before she relented at all, but that just made it all worthwhile.

There were web sites devoted to cataloging the women Tony Stark had slept with. They were dead URLs now, because everything that used to be fun was much more so with Pepper, and because she made him want to make things better. To make her happy, even if he wasn't always very good at it.

Maybe nukes were just more than she could handle. Or maybe that wasn't the problem. If it was a biological clock thing, they were screwed. There weren't enough words in any language to describe what a horrible, horrible idea it would be to let _either_ of them anywhere near a child.

Back in the elevator, he asked, “JARVIS, where's Pepper?” The best possible answer would be “asleep.” His second favorite kind of morning was one spent making up.

Silence. The doors opened on a dark room.

“JARVIS? Pepper?”

Any vestige of good mood drained away. Fury needed to stop pulling this bullshit right now. Not that there was any sign of Nick Fury, or of anyone else. He studied the shadows before moving into the room, ticking over possibilities and options. Barring ninjas, the place looked empty.

A quick search proved that to be the case. Pepper's things were still there, including her handbag with her phone in it. Nothing seemed to be missing except for her. Nothing was there that shouldn't be there, except for a bloodstain on one edge of the kitchen counter, darker than the stone. He stood looking at it for a few seconds before his brain kicked back into gear.

_Don't touch anything. This is a crime scene. Is every place I live going to turn into a crime scene eventually? Never mind, not useful. The reason for kidnapping people is to have them alive. Pepper's had all the training and is Keeping Your Head Under Fire incarnate._

The blood looked dry. This did not just happen a minute ago. Therefore, think. That is supposed to be what you're good at. JARVIS monitored all of the approaches, entryways, windows, elevators, and all locked access points within the tower itself. Someone had managed to shut him down before gaining entrance. There was supposed to be a failsafe, a warning signal in case that ever happened, and it had not gone off. Inside job?

Which made the question of who to trust more complicated than usual. Rhodey was off on the Pakistani border, which remained Tony's least favorite part of the planet. He did know a couple of actual ninjas, but there was the chance _they_ had.... No, down that path was recursive paranoia. Nick Fury was going to live through the day because his people wouldn't have left any traces if they had done it.

He took the stairs down to the workshop. The tower's server room had been hardened to withstand, yes, an actual nuclear bomb during the last round of construction, seemed like a good idea. Everything looked fine, except for the fact that everything was not working. They had gotten access somewhere else in the building, then. That was bad, because it meant they were very good at this, and good, because he didn't have to worry about messing up any evidence.

On a belated thought, he pulled out his phone while he restarted everything. Bruce was a long time picking up, which didn't do Tony's nerves any favors.

“Stark, it's four—”

“Pepper's been kidnapped.”

Beat. “I'll be right up.”

“No. Stay there. It's probably too late, but I'm going to lock the Tower down. Check the labs, see if anyone is still around, if they freak out. All I ask is they be able to answer questions later.”

“Got it.”

Then he called Steve. Because if you can't trust Captain America, who's left?

  
  


*

  
  


“Given the people involved, we're going to treat this as SHIELD jurisdiction until we know otherwise,” Hill said from wherever she was. “You'll be in charge on scene, Captain. The team is en route and will meet you there.”

“Got it.”

“Try to keep it discreet. This is not something we want to hit the news unless it absolutely has to. That means keep Stark from taking the entire island apart, if possible. We've got eyes out on the street, we'll find out if anyone saw anything suspicious, and let you know if anything moves that needs attention.”

“Thank you, Assistant Director.”

He got a move on and prayed that their trust wasn't misplaced, that his fragile new team would be up to this. This was in no way the kind of battlefield he was used to.

Less than thirty minutes later he strode into the Stark Tower lobby. Clint and Natasha were there, dressed for action, along with a double handful of impeccably-suited agents. Steve spent a moment reviewing the building layout. Most of the lower floors were empty. The upper reaches were Stark Industries territory, offices and research labs. Then the Avengers' floors, still mostly unused except for Banner (who was getting dressed), though Clint crashed there once in a while. Then the penthouse.

Most of the SHIELD agents peeled off along the way up, starting a sweep of the building and especially the research levels. Those workers who had decided to put in a late night were probably going to regret their dedication.

Steve had forgotten how big the penthouse was, how all of the rooms flowed together. Not his taste at all. He hesitated just outside the kitchen, Nat and Clint behind him. Tony was watching the specialists go about their work. He stood out of the way, hands in his pockets, and his expression suggested that he was five minutes from murdering someone.

All he said was, “JARVIS is running analysis on the last month of security footage, every recorded movement here, looking for anomalies.”

“Good. Bruce is on his way up.” He tried to figure out the best way to do this.

“Come on, Stark,” Clint said. “You're scaring the nice normal people. Let them do their jobs. We'll do ours.” It earned him a death glare to which Clint was obviously immune, but it worked. One of the technicians may have actually said _Thank God._

The four of them settled in one of the conference rooms in the top R&D level, once it had been swept for bugs. Bruce showed up a few moments later with his shirt untucked. His eyes looked pinched and worried, and he sat down cautiously. Evidently he hadn't fully embraced his changed circumstances, but he was there.

Steve looked around the table. “All right. Suspects?”

Tony raised his eyebrows. “I hope you brought your sleeping bags, we could be here a few days.”

“Loki?” Clint balanced his chair on its back legs.

Steve shook his head. “I like to think we'd be told if he'd gotten loose. And we've seen that he's constitutionally incapable of _not_ gloating. He would have left a note.”

“Hammer?”

“Still in jail,” Tony said.

“That senator you keep going out of your way to piss off?”

Thoughtful silence.

“I think,” Steve said, “that we can leave 'agents of the US government' on the table for now.” Moments like that, he wished he had never woken up.

“Does she have any of her own enemies?” Natasha asked. “I mean, she runs a major corporation these days.”

Tony gave her a startled look. “I don't think so. Not anyone up to this level, anyway.”

“Let's find out. You want to take a look through the business stuff for the past couple of months? You know all the names.”

And Tony very badly needed something useful to do. Steve gave her an approving, almost microscopic nod and said, “Then there's the inside aspect. Lots of people in and out of here with the reconstruction. I assume you do background checks?”

“Of course we do background checks.” He gave Natasha a pointed look.

“I'll go through the personnel records for the tenants and contractors,” she said. “See if anything trips.”

Steve nodded again. “Good. Hawkeye, we need physical recon, stat. If someone's been playing here and actually messed with JARVIS, God knows what else they might have done.”

“Yay, elevator shafts!”

  
  


*

  
  


“Ruh-roh, Shaggy,” Clint said into his comm. He and five other agents had been steadily combing the tower's vulnerable points. Clint won. Duh.

“Report.” Steve sounded his usual stiff and disapproving self.

“I am looking at something that starts with b and rhymes with omb. It's gorgeous. I am going to start a religion dedicated to it, there will be incense and flowers and libations of good beer.”

“How big?”

“Won't take down the Tower. Be no fun at all for anyone in it, though.”

“Can you disarm it?” Tony cut in.

“I know this is going to be a shock, you might want to sit down, but other people are sometimes good at things. I got this.” This one here would damage the tower's ability to roll with any punches. There would be one or more farther down to provide the punch. “You know, if this is the class of enemies we're going to get? I am _so_ into this Avengers Initiative thing.” That got him thinking, and the thinking went on while his hands did what they need to do, teased the magnificent monster into harmless pieces. “Hey, Nat, we should catch a show some time. You ever see _Chess_?”

“No, Barton.”

He started whistling “One Night in Bangkok” while he went looking for the next bomb. He could picture that little frown line between Natasha's brows, trying to figure out what he meant.

Once in a while Steve gave him an update—that the blood matched Pepper's blood type, and the scene guys upstairs had found a tiny ampule on the floor and sent it off for testing. Knockout drugs, probably, and she'd hit her head when she fell.

Sloppy.

“We've got data coming in,” Steve said. “How's it going down there?”

“Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today in memory of an explosive device that verged on perfection in this sad, imperfect world. And which is, alas, no more. Looks like we're clear after this one. Rejoining you in five.”

He sauntered back into the conference room and laid the remnants of the thing out on the near end of the table. The sun had come up while he was working, and bits of light slid through the high rises to poke into corners. The rest of them had not been entirely slacking off. Someone had set three monitors up on one side of the table; Tony was shifting his attention among them, always interesting to watch. Banner stood behind him, pointing to something with his folded glasses. On the other side of the table, Steve was ignoring a fourth display while he spoke softly over the comm—probably updating Hill, from the scowl.

Nat stalked over to Clint, her eyes hard. “Bangkok.”

He nodded. “Didn't want to say it on the comms. I know this work.”

“She died there.”

“Yeah.” _Fury's going to be pissed. People aren't allowed to come from the dead unless he signs off on the paperwork._

“Who is this, then?” Steve asked, closing the call.

“SHIELD agent Gina McCarthy. Specialized in things that blow up. Got killed after an op two years ago. This has her fingerprints all over it. Metaphorically, I mean.” He waved at the bomb ingredients. “Also, Harris found this on eighteen.” He pulled out another item. It was matte black, thin, and about the length of a thumb. “I do believe this is what took down JARVIS.” He tossed it to Tony.

Stark turned it over twice. “That part of recent events has a very short list of possible suspects. Namely, your boss.”

“If there's former SHIELD involved, that might explain it,” Steve said.

“Oh? What else've we got?” Clint asked.

“Two incidents in which someone got onto an elevator and didn't get off for several hours.”

Tony cued up the security records and sat back from the table. Clint came around and stood on his left, watched the camera's fish-eye showed a man in painter's coveralls, carrying a hard-sided cooler, who got on by himself. That certainly wasn't Gina. The view switched to the elevator interior. The image hazed suddenly, lost all coherence, and when it resolved the elevator was empty.

“Can you get any higher resolution on that?” Clint leaned his fists on the table, deliberately not squinting.

“No,” Tony said.

“Replay? One frame at a time.”

Banner put his hands in his pockets and wandered over to the window, frowning in though. Opposite from Clint and Tony, Nat and Steve looked at different footage of the same man, walking in and out of the building with other workers.

“That isn't her,” Natasha said.

“I think that's kind of obvious?” Steve said.

“Not necessarily. He moves the way she did. She was a good four inches shorter than he is, though. According to the records, the company he was working with finished their job on the seventh floor last week. He hasn't been around since. No police record.”

“There,” Clint said, half-listening to them, all watching. “Right there. Hand in his pocket? Jammer of some kind. Don't take out the camera entirely, that'll draw attention, right? Better to just confuse it a bit, a few seconds could be taken for a glitch in a place this size. And then... he's still there, isn't he.” He stared at the image, empty and yet... not? If there could be a person-shaped hole in the air, there was one. The elevator went down; a few other people got on. “Nervy bastard, that was a risk. Still, just have to follow one of them off on a different floor, find an access point. Play time.”

“A personal cloaking field.” Banner turned around folded his arms across his chest. “Based off of SHIELD tech?”

“Looks like.” Tony leaned back in his chair and looked at the screen with hooded eyes. “How unhelpful do you suppose they're going to be?”

Clint coughed. “Um.” Awkward.

“Yeah, that's what I thought. Well, we don't have to ask permission from Uncle Nick.”

“I thought you gave back all of that Phase 2 stuff,” Bruce said, though his mouth went into a wry twist.

“Let's pretend that I did, but this is not Phase 2-related, now is it? We can figure out how they do it, we can figure out how to break it. _After_ we have solved our higher priority problems.”

Clint glanced at Natasha, who lifted one shoulder. Stark's problems with Fury were not theirs. And because the two of them might as well be telepathic, he knew what she was thinking. McCarthy compromised—whether she was dead or alive—could mean other problems, deeper ones, could mean anyone she had ever touched was suspect.

“You want to run the cover?” he asked her.

“Okay, but next time I get the elevators.” She bent back to the keyboard to start deeper inquiries on the invisible man's identity. “Looks like a perfect insert. No anomalies at all. I can pay his building a visit.”

“That's—”

Tony's phone rang. Everybody froze. He glanced at it, frowned, hands flickering over the keyboard, and let it ring twice more before he picked up the call on speaker.

“Yes?” He sounded normal, neutral, disinterested even.

A dry male voice said, “I hope you are having as much fun as I am.”

The windows exploded under a storm of gunfire.

  
  


*

  
  


Pepper woke up with the worst headache she had ever had and clenched her teeth to keep from making a sound. She took several deep breaths and waited for her head to clear enough to remember why that was important.

There had been movement where there should not be movement, and a sting. She had felt dizzy, missed the chair when she tried to sit down, explosive pain in her head, hands on her. That was all straightforward enough. She gathered what she could now without moving, without even opening her eyes.

The air was still, stuffy and very warm. The surface under her was rough and uncomfortable. She didn't hear movement, breathing, or any other signs of human presence. There was a faint murmur of pigeons. Her hands were cuffed in front of her. She opened her eyes the barest slit to find dim light and a large, empty space. She didn't see anyone, so she sat up to take further stock.

She had been stripped to her underwear, which wasn't a pleasant thing to consider at all, but other than her head she wasn't hurt. Her jewelry and hairpins were gone. The cuffs were metal and allowed her some freedom of movement. Light filtered through filthy skylights, some of them broken. The floor around her was dusty, the dust smudged and tracked all around. The building had once been a factory. She got to her feet and edged carefully forward over peeling tiles and bare wood. This had once been a room overlooking the working floor, but there was nothing guarding the edge now and no stairs, just a thirty-foot drop. She thought she could see lines on the old floor marking where machines had stood, and wondered what they had made. She could make out the outlines of what had once been windows, bricked over now. Twelve feet above her, the rafters fluttered with movement.

There was a pallet of bottled water and a bucket in a back corner of her improvised prison. At least they didn't want to die right away. She touched her head; the gash had stopped bleeding, though it was swollen and sore. She had no idea how much time had passed. She might still be in New York, though the silence argued against it. She might be anywhere.

“Hello?” She pitched her voice to the distant corners of the room. Nothing.

There had always been the chance of this happening. If she was lucky, they were going to hold her for ransom. They wouldn't do her any serious harm. There would be negotiations, the government might get involved, and Stark Industries would pay whatever they asked for. It would all be over fairly quickly. And then Tony would track them down and do something unpleasantly final, to make sure it didn't happen again.

The other reason for snatching her would, of course, be for leverage over him. She hoped that wasn't it.

Pepper sat down near the edge with her knees hugged to her chest, running her gaze over and over the walls. She couldn't see any cameras. She got up and paced the dimensions of her prison, ran her hands along the walls and studied the edge of the drop. She supposed that she might jump. She might also break her leg. It was daylight, so it had been at least five hours. How long could negotiations reasonably take? It would take her a long time to starve. She felt a little wobbly and sat down again until it passed, then began a more thorough search. Dimples and divots in the floor told her where furniture had once stood. From the dusty corners she came up with some carpet tacks, one of those magnetic desk sculptures, and a handful of wind-up trains. Presumably the foreman had been a jovial kind of guy.

She looked at the handful of trash, looked at the drop in front of her. She would give it the day, Pepper decided. If this was a ransom situation, it wouldn't take longer than that, if only because by then Tony would have threatened the president into intervening, and never mind what she had said last night. She knew him well enough to know that she could depend on him for _this_. Release or rescue might already be on the way. She sat with her back to the brick wall and tried to clear her thoughts, to just wait.

“ _I give. What did I do?”_

“ _You didn't do anything.”_

“ _We talked about this, we agreed that question includes what I didn't do, too.”_

“ _You didn't not do anything. I'm just in a bad mood.”_

“ _Again.”_

“ _Yes! Again.”_

“ _It's just that... are we rehearsing for something? I could swear we just did this on Monday, I'm pretty sure I still remember my lines.”_

Pepper bit her lip. Rescue might not be coming at all. She might not have been the only target.


	2. Chapter 2

Natasha blinked grit from her eyes. A few prickles of pain did not require her attention. Beside her, Steve was already on his feet and moving toward the shattered bank of windows as the tower swayed. She reassembled her mental image of where everyone had been standing and scrambled after him, gun in hand.

“Bruce?” Steve knelt down next to him, glanced at Natasha and then toward the gaping hole in the outer wall.

Blue granules of glass crunched under her boots. There was blood everywhere—Bruce's. She got to the edge and took a quick glance out. On the other side of the table, Clint did the same, bow ready, hunting targets. She didn't see anything, no source for the attack, and the sounds behind her sent ice down her spine. Steve's murmur was gentler than she would have ever expected, but he never really stood a chance.

_Not again._

No. Not again. This wasn't the same, they could do this. She and Clint traded a glance and tucked themselves into the corner as the room shivered again. Don't look provoking, that was the main thing.

“Dr. Banner...?” Steve moved back from him just in time. Bruce came up off the floor in blind pain and panic and the throes of transition, but he had enough control left to take a few running steps toward what had been the window, away from his nearest human targets. It was the Hulk that hit the ground, taking fire all the way, but from what? Whatever it was moved faster than Natasha could track, and refused to allow her eyes to fix on it.

“Status,” Steve barked.

“I'm fine,” Natasha said.

“Got a target,” Clint murmured, and she could hear him smile as he drew.

“Stark?”

“Fuck off. JARVIS, we have to—”

“The landing area has been damaged. Unable to launch Mark VII.”

“ _Fuck.”_

He couldn't be too badly hurt. Bruce had been between him and the windows.

Clint loosed an arrow. She recognized the tracer head. A spray of red fog outlined the invisible attacker for a moment. Natasha opened fire, hit—something. Another arrow flew. This time an explosion followed it; the vehicle started spiraling downward out of the fog cloud.

The Hulk did not seem to realize that the target of his rage had disappeared. He threw parked cars at the dispersing cloud of mist. One of them hit the tower. Others hit nearby buildings.

“This day is going marvelously,” Tony said, looking over the edge. “Get his attention up here, Clint.”

“Sure, but—”

“ _Before_ he tears apart the neighborhood?”

“Careful,” Steve said, starting forward.

Clint loosed again, a regular arrow that plinked into that broad green neck. The Hulk noticed. He roared and began to climb up the tower.

“See you downstairs,” Tony said, and stepped off the edge.

Natasha blinked twice.

By the time the rest of them got to the ground, Tony was suffering auditory nerve damage but nothing worse than that from the Hulk. She left them to their discussion and headed toward what was left of the wreckage. Clint stayed a few steps behind her, ready to move. Steve assigned himself to crowd control, giving the two of them room to work. She liked that about him.

She took it slow and careful, ready to fire, but nothing moved in the vehicle. The cloaking field was still operating in patches, but it flickered and died before she reached it. The thing was impressively compact, stubby-winged, with room for three people if they liked each other. There wasn't anyone in it now, and the instrument panel was a smoking ruin.

The back of Natasha's neck itched. She didn't see any blood in the flier. If whoever had been in there had a personal cloak, they could be standing right next to her and she wouldn't know it. She saw Clint's glance, no doubt thinking the same thing. She lifted her chin; he nodded and backed off to circle the crash site. She did the same in a counter-wise pattern, their paths spiraling outward, looking and listening for any hint of movement that should not be there, a drift of smoke out of place, a bit of wreckage shifting.

Nothing. Seven in the morning, and already it was hot. This part of town didn't smell, but sweat trickled down her back.

“They're long gone,” Clint said.

“Probably.” She lowered her gun but didn't put it away, and turned toward the Hulk. He had finally put Tony down but hadn't stopped roaring. “I think he's being sent to his room.”

“Docking his allowance.” Clint grinned.

The roaring subsided to growling, and they could hear Tony's voice again.

“One hundred percent right, I do need to watch where I'm going. Don't want to make a habit of this, do we.”

Rumble, growl.

“Cross my heart. That's another one I owe you. Hate to do this, but can we get Samwise back—Bruce, that is, can we get Bruce back, for a little bit? We need him to take a look at something here.”

Growl.

“That would be awesome. See you soon.”

The Hulk gave the rest of them a suspicious look and turned away, absently crushing chunks of sidewalk and turning a street lamp into a bracelet as he moved down the street.

“Samwise?” Natasha raised her eyebrows at Tony.

“What? Short, furry, self-sacrificing, it fits.”

“You two are the same height.”

“Are not.”

“You loaned him a suit for Loki's going-away party.”

“Prove it.” He was grinning, though.

“You are out of your fucking mind,” Clint said. There may have been a thread of admiration in his voice.

“Your powers of observation? Justifiably legendary. What'd they leave us?”

“Not much,” Natasha said. “No bodies, and most of it has self-destructed.”

“Inconsiderate.”

Clint started to hum Tom Petty's “Freefalling.”

“I'm going to teach your quiver to administer shock therapy. Let's go take a look.”

*

That feeling of _holy fuck, not dead?_ That never got old. Falling fifteen stories into a Hulk hug, not so much fun without armor, but any landing you walk away from. It would have been worth it just for the look on Steve's face. Not to mention a distracted Hulk, no longer destroying the tower and environs. Also in the positive column, Tony was _really_ awake now. If he had known what kind of a day this would be, he wouldn't have settled for cat-napping on Steve's couch. All of which was a good way of distracting himself.

The street was full of debris. Emergency vehicles had started showing up. Steve was talking to one of the NYPD, doing his Nothing to See Here, Everything's Just Fine act.

Tony stared at the remnants of the thing that had attacked the tower. Taking it apart would be therapeutic for certain, but maybe not useful.

Bruce ambled back up the street in his usual state of post-Hulk undress and bewilderment, gaze downcast. But he was coming back.

Steve got to Tony first. “Tell me, do you _ever_ think before you do something?”

“I think really fast. It worked.”

“And if it hadn't, we would be scraping you off the pavement. Or the Tower, if he had... hadn't reacted well. Which would be—”

“Would be more useful than you are being, right now.” Without really thinking about it, Tony found himself all inside Steve's personal space. Banner was going to have a rough enough time with this without Steve being... Steve about it.

Steve folded his arms. “Are we going to do this again?”

“My calendar is clear.” _And apparently my life is a greatest hits CD now._

Steve looked over Tony's shoulder and said to Bruce, “Keep him on a leash, would you?” before he spun and walked away.

Bruce said, “Um.”

“Don't you _dare_ apologize. You okay?”

“Yeah. Bit chewed up by the glass. Maybe a bullet or two. Nothing the other guy couldn't set right.”

Tony winced.

“So what the hell is this thing, that we're looking at?” Bruce craned his head skyward. “Think there's more of them?”

“I think they would be shooting at us if there were. Not to say they aren't on their way.”

“Fair enough. How about we go do something smart?”

He managed not to say _Why start now?_ but instead, “Let's get what's left of this thing inside and see what it can tell us.”

“Sir,” JARVIS said as soon as Tony was back in voice range. “I have finished the analysis of Ms Potts' recent business communications. In the past twelve weeks, there has been a fourteen percent increase in communications originating from Switzerland.”

He knew people in Switzerland. He didn't know anyone there who might want to kidnap Pepper.

“All of the contact appear to have originated through legitimate business contacts. I have traced several of them back an additional step, however. All public locations.”

“Keep working on the others. Factor in travel distances, times, see if any patterns show up.” _If this is all down to someone at CERN getting jealous over recent additions to the periodic table...._ “How does everything look upstairs?”

“We were fortunate in that there was no heavy artillery in use. There is considerable damage to the uppermost stories, but it is confined to the windows and outer areas. No fatalities have been reported. There are numerous minor injuries among SHIELD personnel and Tower staff.”

“Well, I know what to give myself for Christmas. Any luck with the call?”

“I'm afraid the duration was too brief for a complete trace. Voice-print does not match any of our records. However, these people appear to have a high degree of technical sophistication.”

“You don't say.” _Someone's having fun. This is personal, and I have no idea who. If you have fucked me over from beyond the grave again, Dad, I am going to have Kitty Kelley write your biography._

Getting the pieces collected and the bulk of the flier moved up to the “things might explode” lab took the better part of an hour. Cleanup started on the street. No more invisible attackers showed up.

While that went on, and while Bruce took samples of the hyper-stealth hull coating for analysis. Tony checked the back doors he still had into SHIELD. _Easier to ask forgiveness than permission_ had worked well for most of his life.

McCarthy, Gina Harriet. 1967-2010. Plain and un-made-up in her file photo, a forgettable face. Like Phil's. He scanned her record. Lots of counter-terrorism stuff, more defusing bombs than setting them, a few instances in which she had set others up for the blame. Bangkok had been one of those. The job done, with four hours before her flight was due, she had gotten into a confrontation with a handful of street punks. It only took one mistake, or in this case one blunt object to the head. They probably hadn't even meant to kill her, but she had been unresponsive when she reached the hospital, dead within an hour. Her body had been recovered, positively identified, and cremated. There was a copy of her official obituary, published in her Iowa hometown paper, about a tragic white-water rafting accident.

Now someone with all of her specialized expertise was walking around in New York, trying to blow up his tower, and kidnapping his... kidnapping Pepper. Whatever she was yesterday or would be tomorrow.

He dug deeper. Life was so much _easier_ now that so many things were online. It didn't take long at all to find the hospital where McCarthy had died, to find their personnel records. Amid the Dengs and Mais was a Juergen Sprunger, visiting neurosurgeon, on loan from Le Centre hospitalier universitaire vaudois in Lausanne 1.

Switzerland. What the hell?

*

“So what we have here is something like the camouflage plating on the Helicarrier, except much more fine-grained.” Bruce sat back from his desk and tried to work the crick out of his neck. The vehicle's instruments had turned themselves into a solid mass of useless metal, so he had busied himself with gross analysis while Tony did less legal things. “Not quite nano-level, but close to it.” He frowned at the blown-up view of a hull section. “Interlinked. Reactive to one another much like a school of fish.”

The Tower stood almost deserted and unnaturally silent. The civilians had been removed to a safe(r) location, and a half dozen SHIELD agents with their heaviest weaponry (which included Cap and Barton) were stationed on the roof in case of further attack. Natasha and the rest of them had the lobby staked out, watching for invisible attackers. Bruce had to hand it to SHIELD, their people weren't shy about taking risks.

“Invisible to the eye and to most forms of scanning. I dub thee 'hyper-stealth.' Not bad stuff,” Tony conceded.

“So they landed here last night, grabbed Pepper, went on their way to... wherever they have her. Came back to wreck the place when their bomb didn't go off.”

“Looks like. In what world does this make sense?” Tony asked the ceiling. “Do not answer that, JARVIS.”

“We may not be dealing with entirely sane individuals here,” Bruce deadpanned.

Tony squeezed his eyes shut for a moment and laughed. “Genius.”

“Can't let you have all the fun. So we'll figure out some other way to track them.” He tried to sound more confident than he felt. “Thermal might work?”

“Nope.” Tony threw the holographic model over to the middle of the room so Bruce could look at it. “The thing runs on batteries.”

“Are you kidding?”

“No. These look an awful lot like what's supposed to go into the next Jupiter mission, if they ever get funding. JARVIS, remind me to do something about that. Tomorrow.”

“What kind of range, do you think?” Bruce scowled at the image. No heat signature to speak of, then. No noise.

“Guessing here, based on a few prototypes—for high-maneuverability flight? Forty miles, outside. But they could be storing it, charging it _anywhere_. Anywhere but here, at least, I already checked our records for any usage spikes.” He switched tracks and called the roof. “Hey, Blue Falcon. Your undead friend have any contacts in Switzerland? There's nothing in her record about anything happening there.”

“Probably, and did you just call Nat Dyno-Mutt? Because I'm really enjoying your death wish today.”

“You know anything about the op where she was killed?”

“Just what's in her file. Could ask around, but if there is a leak, that might tip our hand.”

Banner shook his head and tuned out the for-lack-of-a-better-word “discussion” on the essential uselessness of intelligence organizations that couldn't even trust _themselves_. He was going to miss these people when he left. It had been nice, for a while, to know that someone had his back.

Nice to have top-notch equipment, too. Optics wasn't his field, but he knew enough, and Tony's light-fingered ways with SHIELD data provided most of the missing pieces. Working was better than thinking about worst-case scenarios. He liked Pepper; not many people had ever hugged him like that on first introduction, and certainly not in the past year. If he was a little envious, well, it was only a little.

“If you two are done,” Bruce interrupted. “I think I've got this. It'll be replicating what's immediately around it, but there is going to be lag time, and digital artifacts—dithering, basically—that don't show up in nature. It's just going to be very small, on the millimeter order. Can you get a pattern match on something that small?”

“I'm going to pretend that wasn't a question.” He spun back to the workstation.

“We'll need some kind of viewer to patch it into. Since I assume you're not into cyborging quite yet.” Even at a time like this, the nearly-telepathic connection between Tony and his computers fascinated him. Bruce was happy to claim his own areas of expertise, but sometimes he wondered if Tony deviated too far from the standard to be considered human.

“I'm crazy, not insane. Do not mess with the gray matter.”

Bruce raised an eyebrow but forwent arguing.

A half hour passed before Tony said, “We'll have a prototype in an hour. Which is great, good to have, service to the community, how about another medal, but doesn't get us any closer to Pepper.” He stared at the far side of the room, where a considerable fraction of JARVIS power was being used to work through terabytes' worth of astronomical images, but didn't appear to be looking at it.

“We'll get there.” He didn't say _I promise_ because none of them were young, or stupid, but he tried to make it sound like that anyway. Bruce texted Steve to find out if someone down on the street could be spared to go find some coffee. They were all running too close to empty for the day it was shaping up to be. “So what else have we got that might be traceable? Batteries. That thing that shut down JARVIS. That's an awful lot of interesting technology in one place. How about I'll take the batteries.” After a silent moment, he prodded, “Focus, okay?” What would normally have earned him a blisteringly sarcastic reply received a distracted nod. “So, can we assume that the next armor iteration will be invisible?”

Tony finally looked over him. He wasn't smiling. “I leave that kind of thing to Fury. Gotta own your stuff, or else it owns you.”

“I think you spent too long in California.”

“It's called 'civilization.' Yes, okay, the pizza is better here. That aside.”

Relieved, Bruce got back to work.

Five minutes later, “Sir,” JARVIS said. “There is gunfire in the lobby. Cameras are not working. Also, you have an incoming call.”

*

Stark Tower's tapered structure did not have a roof per se. Steve didn't think much of the building to begin with; today that was veering toward hatred. Every inch of it felt too exposed. A half dozen agents lurked in what corners they could find, waiting for invisible attackers. Steve stationed himself down on the landing platform in case of another flier attack. Clint sat highest, just about invisible himself even without any tech. The only up side to any of this was that it was cooler than it had been down on the street. Even this high, he could smell the pavement scorching. The cleanup crews were almost done down there.

The waiting was familiar. The slow roll of breath and blood, the stillness in between—it was easier to be aware of oneself as an animal. At least, it had _been_ easier, on wooded roads and snow-clad mountainsides; Steve had never gotten good at it, couldn't let that calm fall across him like his own shadow. He thought that Hawkeye and Widow spent most of their lives on that perfectly honed edge when fractions of a second counted. For himself, he always had to fight the urge to pace, to check in on the rest of the team every few minutes, had to consciously slow himself. He hated the waiting, but until they had at least identified the enemy, there was no way to shift the field of battle.

He checked in with Bruce via text. _You two okay?_

_Some progress. No explosions yet._

He suspected that Bruce still didn't have much use for him. That was understandable. Outside of an actual battlefield, it was hard to see how they could all fit together. Possibly, they didn't have to. Still... Tony had called them when he needed help.

Watching the skyline, the surrounding buildings for any hint of movement, his senses remained on high alert and allowed his conscious mind to drift. It wasn't just being out of time, it was being out of place, out of context. Captain America had been a soldier. He had an enemy, a mission, the luxury—and he knew that it had been just that—of unambiguous purpose. None of that applied any longer. In the absence of planetary threat, no one was in a hurry to decide what exactly the Avengers were going to be. Maybe it was best that way.

“I've got something,” a voice came over the comm. Steve placed it as Agent Jackson, with Natasha down on the ground floor. “I think—something—”

Steve heard a _whuff_ of lost breath, a thump, the start of a gunshot before the noise compensators on the comm gear kicked in. Much more quietly, an arrow whiffed past his head.

*

Pepper gave up waiting. She was hungry, but tried not to pay that too much attention. She drank some water and went to work. One did not spend ten years as Tony Stark's PA without learning a few things, even if one really didn't want to. He had gotten arrested a few times, generally in small towns where people refused to believe his ID was genuine.

“ _Hey, Pepper, watch this.”_

“ _What on earth are you...?”_

“ _Party trick.”_

“ _Have you been drinking?”_

“ _Barely. See how easy it is? Click, click. This is the sort of thing public safety depends on. I feel safe, don't you?”_

“ _Very. Will that be all, Mr. Stark?”_

She took the wind-up toys apart. It ruined half her nails, and she poked herself more than once on the points, but she got the springs out. She flattened and twisted the springs together until she had a usefully stiff piece of wire.

Handcuffs were not a complicated mechanism. Click, click. She rubbed her wrists, stretched her arms and looked at the loosened cuffs. If there was a camera, she ought to know about it soon. It didn't seem likely. She hadn't seen or heard any hint of watchers in all these hours. She tried to figure travel times and distances from Manhattan, but without knowing how she had been moved that was an exercise in futility.

Someone was looking for her. Even if the worst had happened, _someone_ would know that she was missing. She needed to believe that they were looking. She also had to assume that she had been very effectively turned into a needle in a haystack at least the size of the eastern seaboard, and all the looking in the world might not do any good. She was scared, and not at all used to doing nothing. She studied the drop again and wondered how long it would take her to get that desperate.

She went around the walls again for anything she had missed the first few times. Not as if she had anything better to do. She found places where pipes and wires had once run, but anything so useful had been ripped out long ago. At least there weren't any signs of rats; there was nothing in the building for them to find interesting, either. Just the pigeons, who from the look of things had been nesting here for years.

Pepper looked up again, saw the rafters and the skylights and thought _Oh._

She tried standing on the bucket, but her best jump fell far short. She refused to get upset about this, clenched her jaw and studied the situation again. She had a liberal arts degree and paid other people to be mechanical geniuses, but there had to be something here she could use. Like the springs. Like... ahah. She had the handcuffs. They were light and reasonably strong.

She started prying up the nails from one of the floorboards.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The hospital referred to is an actual hospital, name used without any sort of permission or endorsement or anything like that. The bit about Tony lending Bruce a suit should properly be credited to http://hellotailor.blogspot.com.


	3. Chapter 3

“Take the call,” Tony said. “Yes?”

“Shall I ask again, Mr. Stark?” The voice was the same as before, dry and chill, with no detectable accent.

“I'm having plenty of fun. You missed.”

“Surely you don't think I intended to kill you.”

“In that case, shooting up my tower sends decidedly mixed signals. What is it that you do want?”

“You.”

“Convenient, I happen to have a me right here. Maybe you want to elaborate?”

“I expect that you are tracing this call. It will do you no good, I hope you understand that. Why do you think I am calling from a pay phone? I exist 'off the grid' as I believe the phrase goes. I have one question for you at this time. Do you wish to see Ms Potts again?”

“Yes.”

The call was coming from France, and yes, from a land line. JARVIS flashed information up about the roof situation, the lobby situation. Steve wanted to know where the hell Tony was. He typed, _Tell him I'll be there in a minute._

“Then these are my instructions. She has not been harmed as of this moment, nor will she be if these instructions are followed. If not, well.” The man chuckled dryly. “It will likely be some months before she is found. You will want dental records in that case.”

 _If you think I am not capable of dismantling an entire country to find you, you are so very wrong._ The trace finished at a pay phone in the countryside. The map populated itself with the other locations they had verified, circles spreading from each until they overlapped and identified a common zone of origin that was much too big for his liking.

“Some of my associates will meet you at the location from which this call was placed. I hope I don't need to specify that you must be alone and unarmed? I do follow the news reports quite closely. Your, ah, 'friends' including the drolly revenant Captain America will meet others of my people at—shall we say the Empire State Building? It's easy to find—at the same time, so that I may be assured that they will not interfere with our transaction. Needless to say, the appearance of any authorities in either location will be considered by me as a... problem. I will be watching.”

“Sounds like you've thought of everything. Any particular time? I'll warn you, I'm chronically late.”

“Given the distance, I do not wish to be unreasonable. You have six hours.”

Disconnect.

Tony looked at his map, then at Bruce. “Remind me that orbital anti-personnel laser platforms are a horrible idea.”

Bruce shook his head. “They are. Mind-bogglingly terrible. _So_ many things that can go wrong.”

“Remind me again in ten minutes.” He headed upstairs. Just keep moving. Move fast enough and time can't keep up.

*

Natasha saw Jackson go down. His gun roared at nothing, hit nothing. The supposedly-locked emergency door next to the freight elevator opened under an invisible touch. She ran toward it, heard Cap mutter a curse and knew that there were more up on the roof.

“I've got one down here,” she said. “Going after him. See to Jackson, I need the stair open.”

“At least one up here,” Steve said. “Hawkeye winged him.”

 _Clint missed a kill shot. He'll be sulking for weeks._ She went through the door ready for anything, heard faint retreating footsteps above. The possibility that there might be more attackers drove her to pursuit. She heard and ignored Steve giving orders up top, the sound of gunshots; nothing she could do about them.

Something rattled down the stairs toward her. She couldn't see anything, but the sound was familiar. She vaulted over the railing, back down to the next landing, and curled tight as the grenade went off. Bits of the stairwell rained down on her. She rolled back to her feet and charged up and after the infiltrator, jumped the new gap in the stair treads while the ringing cleared out of her ears.

“ _Status goddamit!_ ” Steve snarled, possibly for the fourth time.

“Widow here.” She could barely hear herself. “I'm all right. They're using stealthed grenades.”

“We noticed.”

“Still in pursuit. I'm on six.” Above her a door opened and closed. She heard the faintest noise of movement. “She's still headed up.”

Natasha climbed, wary of additional explosive gifts coming her way. Judging from the noise below, something had gone off in the lobby as well. She tried to rely on her ears alone, to make no noise herself that might cover the scuff of a foot on the treads, a panting breath, the click of the emergency door.

“Fourteen,” she reported. “I think she's left the stair.” She climbed faster, stopped at the door and listened. Nothing. She eased the door open, listened some more as her field of view widened. The fourteenth floor was still under construction. Most of the internal walls still had exposed studs. Flats of drywall, spools of wiring, and dropcloths littered the wide space.

“Agent McCarthy.” Her own voice sounded too loud. Being quiet wasn't going to help, and there was the chance that a familiar voice would rattle her.

“Agent Romanoff.” It wasn't McCarthy's voice. “I didn't expect to see you here.”

“Or I you.”

“It explains a few things. Funny old thing, life.”

“Very.”

“I suppose you know all about what it's like to be dead.”

“I'm not sure I'd say that. This is a different sort of job for you.” She kept her back to the main wall, only her eyes moving, listening. A dropcloth swayed. Natasha dropped and rolled as Gina's gun roared. She returned fire, tracked the ripple of motion and fired again. Nothing moved.

Natasha pitched her voice to carry. “I'd like to know what happened to you.”

“What's to know? I'm dead.”

“Yes, about that. I would like to understand.”

The reply, when it finally came, was in a different accent and a tone of panic. “What—where am I? What the hell is going on?” It was followed by a string of curses, Gina's speech pattern coming forward again.

“Put the gun down,” Natasha said. “I would rather not shoot you. Whoever you are, right now.”

“Who the hell—?”

The air blurred, not even six feet away from her. She moved, heard the shot, and lunged. Contact. The cloaking fabric felt slick and cold. He twisted under her, still trying to escape. She got hold of a wrist, twisted and pulled and heard a choked cry, but he threw his weight against her—she knew the moment it dislocated his shoulder—and pulled away. She tangled his legs, regained her hold, and slammed his head into the floor.

Two seconds later, Iron Man came in through the window and pulled up hard, ready to fire.

“This one alive?” he asked.

She pulled off the stealth hood and checked her prisoner's breathing. “Yes.”

“Good.”

“The other one?”

“Was about to shoot one of your fellow spooks in the head, so yeah, he's no longer with us. Good news, the software works. You'll be able to see them.”

A flurry of status reports confirmed no further activity and four agents in various states of wounded.

“So now what?” Clint asked.

Tony said, “Here's an idea. I have all kinds of industrial machinery lying around, and this guy's boss has monumentally pissed me off.”

“You can't just jump into being a Bond villain, Stark, you have to pace yourself. Or leave it to us professionals.”

Natasha stood up. “We might want to try a different approach with this one.”

*

When Natasha came out of the impromptu interrogation room, her gaze went straight to Clint, a steady, evaluating gaze that made him wary. She didn't tell him to leave, though. He knew that she could read his look in return, that they had more trouble on the way.

“The personality template is breaking down,” she said. “It needs reinforcement—whatever the process is, there's injections every few weeks. It might just be a way of keeping them under control, or it might be that the transfer process isn't perfected. There are a few gaps in her knowledge, but she knows she's dead, she knows what's happening. The original personality is leaking through. _His_ mind is... disorganized. Impossible to tell whether he'll recover, whether he'll be intact once she's gone. And no,” she added, “she's not faking it. She wasn't that good. From the looks of things, the body she's using is an innocent bystander in all of this. We're going to have to hand him over to professional care.”

“Well, that's just awesome,” Clint muttered. Mind control was going to be a thing they had to deal with, apparently. He looked at Steve, who stood with folded arms and a downright angry expression. “You want to give her the good news?”

Steve's frown darkened. “I just got off the comm with Hill. We're being stood down. The injured agents have been taken care of. Signs point to there being only these two of them, since we've got one flier and there wouldn't have been room for three _and_ Pepper in it. Since there's no threat to the general public, and there has been contact with the kidnappers, Hill says we defer to the FBI.”

Clint shook his head. It made sense from an upstairs perspective. The feds and the city government were no doubt pitching jurisdictional hissy-fits into Hill's ears. Lots of people thought that SHIELD had gotten too big, too fast, an entire division of loose cannons that laughably considered itself “in charge” of a half dozen super-powered lunatics. Sure, they had saved the entire civilian population of New York, if not the actual world, but that high profile had a price.

“I don't know about you two, but I don't plan on doing anything of the sort.” Steve looked at them. Clint looked at Natasha. She nodded. He nodded. “I don't think anyone's going to try to _stop_ us. There's nothing that says we're only allowed to avenge planetary invasions. But we won't have any backup, and any trouble we cause is our trouble.”

Natasha shrugged. “Unless something we turn up does indeed pose a threat to the general public? Like invisible airborne assault vehicles?”

“If I'm reading Hill right, that's the problem. Officially, those things don't exist. Does that mean what I think it does?”

Clint spun an arrow between his fingers, baton-style. “No surprise. Their priority's gonna be the security leak we've apparently had for a while now.”

“Where's Tony?” Natasha asked.

“Doing... things.” Clint waved a hand. “That we plausibly don't know anything about.”

*

“Fuck SHIELD. Why do I pay taxes again?”

Bruce wisely recognized this as a rhetorical question.

“Here, give this a try. It's your current prescription.” Tony tossed him a pair of the new goggles. “Does the other guy need glasses?” From nothing to functional cloaking-device defeaters in under two hours, that wasn't bad.

“I don't believe he's been tested.” He held up the eyepiece and touched the focus. “Infra-red, too?”

“Why not, doesn't take any more time.”

“Incoming mail,” JARVIS announced. “Unable to determine its point of origin.”

“Our buddy again already?” He spun to face the nearest screen. It was plain text, all of the SHIELD formatting and verbiage about the death penalty for unauthorized viewing stripped out but plainly originating from them.

Juergen Sprunger. Born Lausanne, Swiss Confederation, 1944. Educated Geneva, London, Columbia University. A long string of hospitals—the stays got shorter and shorter, the reasons for his departure more and more vague, but they included one in Bangkok. An equally long list of publications, fewer and fewer of them over the years, the journals farther toward the fringe. No living relatives. Blameless bank records. Last known permanent address in Savigny, where it sounded like he was in semi-retirement. The record had been created right after McCarthy had died, normal SHIELD paranoia at work, but they hadn't seen anything to engage their interest further.

The last line consisted of a little piece of ASCII art, a beetle-like figure that looked an awful lot like one of the ships from Galaga.

Tony smiled without much humor. _Social engineering wins this round, Director Fury._

One of the reasons Sprunger had been able to lapse into semi-retirement was his ownership of a local shipping company with offices dotted across the countryside.

JARVIS was reading his mind again, because he said, “Four of those locations match points of origin for suspect contacts to Ms Potts.”

Tony frowned and glanced back through what Bruce had found about the battery technology—there wasn't much there, they didn't even have a factory yet. Work had been set back last year, when one of their head technicians died in a skiing accident. Ran into a tree, massive cranial trauma, never regained consciousness. Near Lausanne.

 _All... right, then._ If it had been anything, anyone else at stake, he would have already been in the air. As it was, he sat for a couple of minutes, thinking. Then he tapped the intercom.

“Agent Romanoff? You still with us?”

“Last I checked,” her cool voice came back.

“Let's pretend you're a middle-aged doctor in Switzerland, leading a not-blameless-at-all and somewhat eccentric life. You bank at UBS already like everyone else, but all of the sudden you're flush with ill-gotten gains and have to hide them somewhere you consider clever. Which bank?”

“Why?”

“Because I don't want to waste ten whole minutes breaking into the wrong one.”

“That'll teach me to ask.” She gave him the three most likely propositions.

He went to work. “Since you have been so very very helpful, I will let you drive.”

“Drive what?” Her voice had gone wary again.

“Come up to R&D seven in... fifteen minutes.” He glanced at Bruce, who knew what they had been keeping on that floor.

Bruce had an _I can't believe I'm saying this_ look. “I'm in. Circumstances permitting, and all.”

“Thanks.” The first bank was the right one. Sprunger had been selling his stolen secrets. If this went pear-shaped, there would be a trail of evidence in the event SHIELD or anyone else cared. Steve must be rubbing off on him. “Let's do this, then.”

*

“What the hell is that doing here?” Clint stopped short in the doorway. Natasha poked him in the back.

“Getting ready to fly, I hope.” Tony fastened the panel down.

“You _hope?_ ”

“The gratitude I get.” He sat back from the Chitauri flier. One of the bigger ones, it would hold all four of them, though there wasn't going to be much leg-room. “We have two instances in the past couple of years of people dying from head injuries in the near vicinity of Dr. Sprunger. Technology that those two people and very few others would have known about was used for the vehicle that attacked the tower. Over the past year, Dr. Sprunger has deposited quantities of cash in a secret account. JARVIS is working on figuring out where he might have been selling the stuff. Dr. Sprunger also owns a small courier service. Several of the points of origin for recent communications with Pepper were within a few miles of those offices. All of that put together makes me think we have our....” He waved the screwdriver. “Perpetrator.”

“That seems sound,” Bruce said. “Although the bit about the head injuries is still a bit of a leap, I suppose my house has too much glass for any stone-throwing.”

“He's a neurologist. He's figured out some way of preserving, transferring, what-have-you, memories wholesale, at least for the short term. Life-sciences people, I just don't know.”

Steve nodded, but his attention was on the Chitauri craft. “So that's what you've been working on?” He circled it as if he thought it might do something on its own, which was not an entirely irrational fear.

“Part of it. The rest of it is behind you.”

Steve turned. He stared. His silence attracted the others.

“Stark, what the hell is this?” Natasha asked. She walked right up to the extraordinarily realistic duplicate of herself and touched its face. Her hand jerked back slightly faster than she might have liked anyone to see.

“It was going to be a surprise. You can send yourself to boring press conferences and be off doing something more fun. Stabbing people, having an ice cream soda, whatever.”

“Why am I the most done?” She tilted her head to the side.

“Because you spent a lot of time in my house being beautifully duplicitous. I have more scans of you, how you move. They're seriously _not_ ready,” he added. The prototypes probably weren't going to survive the day, which was frustrating, but there was no way he was letting those fall into anyone else's hands. “Appearance is easy. Motion, not so much. Realistic interaction, much, much harder. But it doesn't have to last long.

“Our psycho friend's plan has been in motion since before we all had Happy Fun Time with Loki. He sees things getting tighter here, maybe, and he's in a hurry now, half-assing things so he doesn't have to deal with all of us. He wants to divide our forces, okay; we let him think we're playing by the rules. Send those to meet his minions here in New York. Meanwhile, I and anyone else who wants to goes to see Psycho and find out where he's stashed Pepper.” He patted the Chitauri flier's flank. “Note, Captain, the presence of actual forethought as and when required.”

“Maybe it could turn into a habit.”

“We're going to Switzerland in _that?_ ” Clint sounded at least as pained as Bruce looked.

“I'm leaving in fifteen minutes. If you're coming along, you're flying this, unless you can liberate something faster in the time we have. It's more comfortable than it looks.” Which, admittedly, wasn't very comfortable. “There's a speed threshold that triggers a force field. You won't fall out.”

“What does it run on?” Steve touched it, and though he did not snatch his hand away, his expression twisted a bit in a way Tony entirely understood. The quasi-organic material creeped him right the hell out, too.

“Originally, beamed energy from the mother-ship. Hence them all keeling over when it went boom. Haven't figured out how that worked across the portal, or worked at all, actually, yet, so it's running off a spare arc reactor right now.”

“You have spares?”

“Oh yes.” Some lessons only had to be given once. “Controls aren't hard to figure out, the Chitauri aren't that different on the outside. Don't touch anything that isn't labeled. No in-flight meal, but I could wire in some speakers. Oh, and you'll like this.” He touched the console, and the flier disappeared.

“You hyper-stealthed it?” Clint actually sounded impressed. “ _This morning?_ ”

Bruce gave Tony an odd look. “I thought you said—”

“I remember what I said. You guys are supposed to be the cavalry while I play psycho-bait.”

Clint was still grumpy. “Maybe someday we should discuss why psychos _like_ you so damn much.”

“That's enough,” Cap said, mild but frowning. “Let's get this done.”

*

“I just want to state for the record that I am not at all comfortable with this,” Bruce said.

“Got a better idea?” Tony shrugged. “You'll do fine. Time's wasting.”

Bruce picked up the scalpel.

*

One of the cuff rings snapped and cut Pepper's hand. She kept working. It was painful and mindless and she didn't let herself stop or even really think about whether it was going to do any good, so that when the last nail finally popped free, she was so surprised that she made a noise that was much too close to a sob of relief. She was sweating in the warmth, from exertion and from bouts of panic. She drank some more water.

The board was heavy as sin. It was starting to get dark. She wondered if she ought to wait for morning, considered how hungry she was going to be by then and the possibility that someone who was not a rescuer might show up, and decided to chance it. If no one had come by now, they might not be able to. She stacked the plastic-wrapped bricks of bottled water to make a fulcrum and levered the board into position, and for the first time in her life wished that she weighed more.

The resulting ramp was much, much steeper than she would have liked it to be, but it gave her a way up to the rafters. It was a climb, not a walk, and she was shaking and full of splinters by the time she got up there. The rafters by contrast were broad, though she grimaced at the pigeon leavings. The birds themselves fluttered away in consternation as she fixed her gaze on the broken skylight and pretended she was a little girl pretending to be a tightrope walker. _Don't look down. Don't look back. Don't think about what you're doing, just do it and you won't have time to fall._

She didn't. The factory's twilit roof stretched out around her. Another building stood nearby, the pair of them surrounded by a few acres of cracked blacktop, and then it was just weedy fields and trees. She thought that she could make out the old access road by the break in the vegetation. Obviously not New York City, but this could be the outskirts of a hundred dying rust belt towns.

She looked up again. No red and gold streak in the sky. _Tony, where the hell are you?_


	4. Chapter 4

The thing of it was... New York had changed a lot. America had changed a lot. But when he first woke up, Steve hadn't been there in a while, at least not relative to his own mental frame. So while the new New York had been a shock, Europe had been a bigger one. They had only spent about ten minutes in Stuttgart with Loki, in the dark, and now here they were following Tony across France and it was dark again. The very nearness of the mountains weighed on him, invisible though they were in the night, though this was far from the theaters of war he had known. Far from Zola.

He made a promise to himself, to come back as soon as he could. He wanted to see it by daylight, wanted to make sure that everything he had read about was real. It would be worth it, be worth everything he had lost if he could see all of those shattered places made whole, full of people whose faces did not know the bite of hunger, who had never lain awake waiting for the shells to fall.

Such a small part of the planet, when all was said and done, but while he slept, it had seen the longest period of peace there _ever_. Maybe the idea would spread.

“JARVIS says we are go,” Clint said.

*

_Leading candidate for my epitaph? “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”_

Face to face with the plan, Tony did not like any part of it. It was a stupid plan, it was too complicated, it wasn't going to work, and it had been mostly his idea. He didn't even have anyone to complain about it to. _Stay loose and do what the moment requires_ was usually the sum of his strategy. That worked when it was just him, but maybe any plan that involved five people would have to be complicated.

He didn't like that, either. It was easier for Steve, for Clint and Natasha, and probably even for Thor when he was around, being royalty from another planet. They were used to having people behind them. _Of course, it's harder for Bruce, who's only used to people behind him in that they are chasing him, and_ he's _sticking around, so really, what am I bitching for again?_ Nerves.

Savigny was smaller than some shopping malls, was basically a rest stop centered on a roundabout. Tidy fields and clustered houses surrounded a handful of hotels and restaurants catering to tourists.

He pulled the rental car into the lot by the weirdly hexagonal grocery store. There was the pay phone. He didn't see any invisible people; this late at night, there was no one around at all. If he stayed here for more than five minutes someone was going to think he was dealing drugs.

It was less than that before a windowless van pulled in and parked a few slots away. The back doors opened. Tony left his phone on the seat and his sunglasses on the car dash (JARVIS was watching through the store's CCTV system and would interpret that as the signal that things were happening as intended) and strolled over, hating every second of this.

Including the driver, four people waited inside the van. That meant three with their hands free to point guns at him. They looked like locals, wore basic jumpsuits that could, with the addition of a nametag and a logo patch, make them almost as invisible as anything SHIELD had come up with.

“Guess this is the right place.”

“In. Hands where we can see them,” one of the men said in unaccented English. Other than the henchmen and their equipment, the back of the van was empty.

He wondered if they were all Gina—that must make for weird conversations—and decided not to ask. The doors slammed with an unpleasantly final sound.

If nothing else, it was a window into what he could expect if SHIELD ever arrested him (assuming that they bothered, and didn't just have him erased in the middle of the night). They gave him a thorough going-over for anything even vaguely metallic, for chemical agents, for anything signal-emitting. He would have liked to get his hands on that scanner for five minutes. They stripped the bandages from his wrists. That hurt, but the surgical glue held through their suspicious prodding, and their scans showed nothing. They zip-stripped his wrists too tightly for comfort and bound his elbows behind him, which neatly aborted any ideas about getting his arms free. Then they took his watch apart, as if he would bother with anything that obvious, and poked around the arc reactor for a while. That was fine. He probably wouldn't want to sleep this week anyway.

Satisfied, they let him slide down the wall until he was sitting on the floor. One of the three banged on the divider. The van pulled out of the lot. No windows, and they made a lot of turns at first, but Tony had a decent sense of direction; they were headed north and west, into the mountains. Off the grid. None of the Ginas said a word, but they were all watching him. He started to suspect that they actually took turns blinking. There was a time and place for distracting people with senseless chatter, and nervous people with guns was not that. So, other than trying to keep track of where they were and ignoring how much his shoulders hurt, there wasn't much to think about.

“ _What were you doing calling me in the middle of an alien invasion?” Pepper's voice had been halfway between exasperation and fear once she was finally on the ground again and had broken off their embrace._

“ _I thought maybe I'd left the stove on.” His thought, halfway between_ thank God, she doesn't know _and_ oh shit, she doesn't know. _No one knew but the six of them (oh all right, and Fury, and probably Loki but fuck him). The cameras had been too distant and shaky for anyone else to figure out the last few minutes of the battle, what had actually happened,_ why _it had happened that way. All they knew was that the portal had closed, the fighting had stopped, the Avengers had done... something and saved the day._

“ _You haven't touched that stove since they installed it.”_

“ _You're right, why do we even have a kitchen? We could probably make do with a coffee-maker and a toaster oven, be just like college.”_

“ _Funny. What was so important?” She had that look, like she was trying to see through him._

_They have always been capable of breaking each other without half trying._

“ _I wanted to tell you that I remembered when your birthday is.” Selfish thing to do, but she ought to be used to that._

“ _My birthday isn't for months.”_

“ _I know. I mean I know, that it's still a ways away. That's kind of amazing, right?”_

_She got the whole story eventually, and when he introduced her to Bruce, Pepper had hugged the man so hard it seemed like someone might get damaged._

_It wasn't that it was no big deal. It was too big a deal, almost, to think about at all. Nearly dying was the least of it. That was just... luck, and timing, and not important, he did not want to discuss it and could not stop remembering. Yay, team, let's take tomorrow off._

_They had all drifted apart since the fight, and then drifted back together, because none of them had anywhere else to go. None of them wanted to discuss Fury's invisible string-pullers, the people who would write off nine million lives as collateral damage, but sometimes it seemed like they were settling in, getting ready for the day that talk had to happen. Until then, at least they trusted each other. That was something. He was trusting them, now. New thing, not entirely pleasant. Could be worse._

The van sped along in silence for an hour before it slowed. The road inclined upward more often than not. Another turn brought the sound of gravel under the tires. Fifteen minutes later they stopped. The driver got out and opened the back door, gun in hand even though Tony was obviously no threat at all right now.

The other Avengers _would_ have been a threat, tied up and disarmed or not. Tony had enough to manage getting out of the van without falling over. His arms had gone numb, which was kind of an improvement.

They were in a windowless garage, which held their van, its vehicular twin, and another flier such as the one that had attacked the tower. A defibrillator on the wall and a wide metal cabinet broke up the cinderblock walls. The floor was clean-ish, and the lights worked. One of the Ginas punched a code into the keypad. A very wide door, unpleasantly reminiscent of hospital fittings, slid aside to admit them. Tony allowed himself to be escorted past a set of double doors with another keypad, down a hallway, and into what looked more like a normal living space.

For certain definitions of normal, anyway. The high-ceilinged room stood almost empty of furnishings, other than a desk and two chairs at the far end. A lamp on the desk provided the only light. The room smelled of cigarette smoke. One long wall had been practically papered over with photos, magazine covers, newspaper articles, press releases. Pride of place was occupied by Howard Stark's full-page _New York Times_ obituary.

Two Ginas stood on guard at the door, but they didn't try to stop him from walking around the room. Tony assumed they were at the _he's never going to leave this place alive_ stage and therefore it didn't matter what he saw. The desk was strewn with things—a calendar, a collection of pens with hotel and drug company logos, and a legal pad full of scribbled notes. That looked very much like a timeline, or a checklist. The word Oswego stood out amid the scrawled German. Either it didn't occur to them that Tony could read upside down, or else they thought it didn't matter. Which it might not, if the rest of them didn't _hurry the hell up_.

The door opened again. The man who stood framed there for a moment looked older than his seventy-some years. He wore glasses over large, mild-looking eyes. A lab coat was draped over his tall, stooped frame, with a stethoscope in one pocket. Under the coat he wore a suit and tie.

“Good evening,” he said in a quiet voice. Without the masking he had used on the phone, he had a dark baritone and a slight accent.

“Dr Sprunger, I assume.”

“You assume correctly, Mr. Stark.”

“So, where is she?”

“In due time.” He stepped into the room and closed the door behind him.

“Hm, no. That's not how this works. You specified delivery of one thing, in exchange for a piece of information. You have the thing, so let's have the information.”

“You are hardly in a position to insist. Forgive me if I wish to savor the sight for a few moments. I imagine you are curious, as well, as why I wished you to visit me here.”

“No. Really, I'm not,” he repeated when Sprunger looked affronted. “Despite my brilliant conversational skills, no one ever kidnaps me for anything fun. Also, your creepy little shrine here makes me suspect that _I_ don't have anything to do with whatever hornets have nested in your brain.”

Sprunger recovered his aplomb, smiled, and crossed the room to seat himself behind the desk. He straightened his papers with long, thin hands, then folded them before him. “Do you know what a psychopomp is?”

“At least eighty-four points on a triple word score.”

“It is a guide, Mr Stark, an interlocutor between the worlds of the living and the dead. Previously, that has been a one-way journey. I should think that would be of interest. The death of the body need no longer be a thing of concern. My process works. Effective immortality, within our reach. And I find it more than slightly fitting, the multiple roles _you_ shall play in bringing the new light into the world.”

Tony sighed. “Next commencement speech I give will be 'why your ethics board does not exist _just_ to frustrate your under-appreciated genius.'”

“Do so, by all means, I should be most amused to hear y _ou_ of all people prate about ethics.”

“Is this going to be another 'you come from a family of thieves and murderers' deal? Because I don't think a sample size of two is statistically valid.”

“How about three?” He walked to the center of the display, one composed of older newspaper clippings, yellow behind the glass, going back to the war. There was a photograph of Howard that Tony had never seen before. “My mother was not a sentimental woman,but she kept this—kept it to herself for many years. She was very proud. Far too proud to ask for what should have been her due, or mine. So I have made my own, across the years, and now... I will have the rest.”

*

Natasha took the controls while Hawkeye kept their quarry in sight. They kept far up and behind the van, wary of spotters. JARVIS relayed the occasional update from New York, where he was controlling the imitation Avengers (and thank God that out of all of them, Tony was the only one likely to be recognized in public, and the robots were unimpeded in their progress toward the rendezvous). Steve fretted and kept Bruce company, or vice versa, since Bruce was far off in some calm and quiet place, breathing away the journey. The flier was fast, he would give it that. Not the most comfortable way to travel by a long shot, though, with nothing visible between them and a very long drop into the ocean.

The houses and farms gave way to open countryside and then to forest. The van turned onto a side road and vanished under the tree cover.

“What've we got up ahead?” Steve scanned the dark horizon. Night vision and moonlight showed nothing but woodland and the occasional ski slope in the far distance. They kept going long enough that he started to worry they had lost their quarry.

The generator showed up first, and then the outline of the house under its heavy stealth covering, invisible to most eyes. Unfortunately, while they could tell that it was there, it was impossible to tell anything about the layout, since the place itself was covered over by the stealth fabric. It was large and two-storied and almost certainly guarded by people who knew as much as any SHIELD agent did.

“You two check out the building,” Steve told Natasha and Clint. “I'm going to run a perimeter, see if there's anything else here we need to worry about. Bruce...?” He was still wary of issuing orders there.

“I'll come in if they need me,” he said, fiddling with his stealth-goggles.

“Thanks. JARVIS, what's the word?”

“No one has approached the decoys other than two individuals seeking spare change. Either of those might have been agents of the enemy, but none have identified themselves as such, nor have I seen anything my protocols suggest as suspicious. Whether or not they have been fooled, there were no instructions beyond appearing here, and the longer they remain stationary the greater the risk of discovery.”

“Bring them back in, then. And remind me to talk to Tony about what constitutes a good surprise.”

“I shall do so, Captain, in the event that it remains pertinent.”

JARVIS's cold-bloodedness occasionally took him off guard. Steve changed the subject. “Any other news?”

“As far as locating Ms Potts? New York is a rather large city,” the dry voice replied. “The number of places to which any one person might have been unwillingly relocated given undetectable flight capability and even two hours time is so large as to be meaningless to the organic mind. Given the total hours elapsed since then, the number approaches infinite. I fear that your current strategy is the only feasible approach, and the odds are—”

“Thanks, but I'd just as soon not know.” He touched the alien controls, and the flier lifted off with a quiet hum, blue-lit by its temporary power source. It felt weird to see one of the reactors outside of Tony, which just went to show what you could get used to.

He found no human sentries, but two places where hiking trails passed close to the hidden house and were equipped with motion-sensitive cameras. Steve heard Natasha and Clint exchange comments so cryptic they might as well be in another language, and added _high-tech security measures_ to the list of things he needed to get familiar with, quickly.

“They'll know when the hyper-stealth goes down,” Clint concluded. “We'll have to make this fast and hard as soon as that happens.” They were all aware of how much time was passing.

“All right. Here's the play.” Steve outlined the attack, got their nods. “And remember, these people aren't in their right minds, they should be considered hostages if anything. JARVIS? Go.”

“As you say, Captain Rogers.”

He gave the countdown for the rest of the team.

An arrow took out one of the watching cameras. The stealth netting went down, and the outline of the bulky structure blinked into partial visibility. The Hulk took out the generator with a relatively controlled smash. Clint stayed on watch outside while Cap and Black Widow moved in.

They identified the garage quickly enough, as someone drove through the door as they made a break for it. Clint took out two of the tires, waited five seconds, and put an arrow through the man's knee when he tried to run.

The Gina Corps had good reaction times. Machine gun fire erupted at the other end of the house, where the Hulk had started in on the building itself. Lot of good that would do them. Steve and Natasha cut through the shrouding fabric at their end. The building underneath was almost entirely dark. Their flashlights played across boarded-over windows, weathered siding in dire need of paint, and disintegrating gingerbreading. Steve bashed a way in through one of the windows, saw a flicker of color on the infrared goggles and barked a warning to Natasha. The shield took the bullets, took the explosion of a grenade, and then he was on top of the guard, who might be well-trained but was also only human. As were the five others with him.

Two got past Steve. He heard Natasha being efficient behind him while he dealt with the others, remembered to pull his blows. They left the men in a groaning heap near the window.

He started to ask, “Where should—” An intense explosion rocked the house. Plaster dust, chunks of lathe, and a disturbingly heavy ceiling beam came down a few inches from Steve. They exchanged a glance. “Tony.”

*

“I hope you don't think you're the first person to make that particular claim,” Tony said. “Not that it would actually surprise me, given Dad, it's just that none of them have panned out to date. I have an entire office full of lawyers for this stuff.”

“It does not matter to me whether you believe me.” He glanced at his watch. “They ought to be ready now.” He stood. “Come with me, please.”

“Ahem. Pepper?”

“Does it matter all that much?” He looked curious and somewhat sad.

“It does.”

“Well. I think that for the time being, she might be more useful to me where she is. No doubt she knows much that should be preserved.” He signaled to the guards.

_Aaaand this is where I lose interest in letting you live._

Not that there had been a whole lot of that to begin with.

They walked back toward the garage, toward the double doors he had noticed on the way in. That turned out to be an elevator. The underground areas were new, in contrast to the decayed halls above ground. Heavy refrigerator type doors lined the hall. It was all too easy to imagine what needed cold storage here. Most of the space was open, and occupied by what looked like a 1970s era rumpus room redone as an operating theater. A doorway on the far side led into an office, its walls lined with filing cabinets and shelves of old journals.

_Now_ was the time for stalling.

“So you want to put my brain in a jar. And maybe into a few other people later on. This is your brilliant scheme? You'll have to get in line, there's a list as long as my arm of people who want dibs. And you're probably out of luck anyway because I am, biologically speaking, kind of weird.” People like Banner got very excited about phrases such as _persistent neuroplasticity,_ and they were free to study the hell out of Tony's brain _after_ he wasn't using it any more.

Sprunger shrugged. “You should understand, that only deepens my professional interest. I shall have to do some comparison scans. But if it makes you feel any better, it's not only your brain for which I have uses. My own body,” he tapped his chest, “is not likely to last me much longer. I should have given up smoking back when they told me to, eh.”

“There is no way to parse that that isn't incredibly creepy. Also, _this?_ ” He glanced down at himself. “Well and truly out of warranty. Going to need a new liver in five years. Seriously, I cannot even begin to tell you the reasons why this is a terrible idea, and that's from _your_ point of view, I think mine goes without saying.”

“So one does hear. It doesn't need to last long. Long enough for me to make certain arrangements regarding my research. One does require funds, you know, and I find it grows tiresome to deal with criminals. Such petty minds. I have perhaps a few years left to me in which to perfect this process. You may be of some assistance to me, no? You may think now that it's not much of a life, but I can assure you, it is better than none at all. So my servants have told me, so they have affirmed through their willingness to do whatever I require, in the name of their own continued existence, in any form.”

“I think I've just been insulted.” Tony smiled at him, because he heard a familiar sound just for a moment before the Mark VII punched through the ceiling. Then he held his breath, because it had never occurred to him to test this scenario, and it was possible that he was about to be dismembered by his own tech. At least it had found the tracking chips Bruce had (reluctantly) embedded in his wrists.

There was the minor problem of the two zombie-Ginas. Sprunger pulled a gun out of his lab coat pocket, and that was just not sporting. Tony got most of the table between him and them, hit the floor and held still while the suit tried to figure out what the hell it was supposed to do in this position. Pins and needles flooded his arms as the unfolding armor bit through the ropes, the plastic. In a few minutes that was going to hurt like hell.

The lights went out. The floor vibrated on a familiar roar, muted as the faceplate slammed shut.

“You're late,” he said.

“Nice to see you, too, sir,” JARVIS said.

Iron Man stood up, ignoring the bullets. “We've got what we came for. Let's—”

Sprunger raised his gun and fired as he backed away. The green glow that resulted was _not_ a bullet.

“Power levels falling,” JARVIS said. “Seventy-eight percent.”

SHIELD stuff again. “That's it, Fury is _off_ the Christmas card list. And remind me to up my consultation fees.” The thing worked fast, too. Another minute and he was going to be in trouble, but that wasn't fast enough at this close range. He wasn't particularly gentle about removing the gun from Sprunger's grip, or about picking up the good doctor by the shoulder. The two Ginas had apparently seen the better part of valor, or had gone to join whoever was firing all of the ordinance upstairs.

Sprunger had claimed to be off the grid. No connections to this house from the outside world meant nothing backed up anywhere. This was all there was to be had. Tony played the suit's lasers over the lot of it until every piece of equipment had melted to his satisfaction. Setting fire to that paneling was a bonus. Then he turned toward the office.

Sprunger shrieked and twisted free, lunged for the door and the years of research turning to ash there.

The office was also, as it turned out, where the oxygen tanks were stored.

 

*

By the time they had all assembled outside with the currently-Gina-brained prisoners (who sported an assortment of arrow wounds, contusions, and concussions), the house was engulfed in flames.

“Local authorities are en route,” JARVIS reported. “Via helicopter. ETA twenty minutes.”

“Guess someone noticed the party,” Clint said, dusting off his hands.

“Those of you with delicate public identities can take off,” Cap said. “Keep an eye on the Hulk and we'll meet up with you when we can.” He glanced at Tony. “You've—”

“Already notified the relevant people where they stashed Pepper? Strangely enough, yes. Although if you get back to New York before us....”

“We'll keep an eye on her,” Natasha promised. “Come on, let's find Bruce's emergency pants before Interpol shows up.”

 

*

Pepper looked surprised to see Tony in the doorway. “Hi. What are—I thought they said—”

He waved a hand. “Briefly detained, all fine now, except that trading favors with Fury makes me feel like I should I don't know, take a shower in holy water or something, but I think I'm still ahead of him on points for finding his massive security hole for him. Anyway, it was self-defense. Kind of. I'm sorry I wasn't there to pick you up.” The smell of hospitals made him twitchy. “Sounds like you had everything under control anyway. Fire ax, huh?”

“I was mostly naked and wasn't sure who they worked for! I figured I'd make a more convincing case for calling the authorities if I was armed.” Having found the ax in the abandoned office building next door, she had walked four miles in the dark before finding a gas station.

“I wasn't finding fault with the tactic _at all_. Thor might try to recruit you.”

She relaxed and gave him a slightly sheepish grin. “You can come in, you know.”

“Okay.” He did, closing out the endless whisper of activity elsewhere on the floor.

“Are you all right? What was this all about? Steve gave me a summary but it was military-speak.”

“I'm fine. Couple of stitches,” he admitted, because she always found out anyway. The bullets had mostly missed but not always by far enough, and his wrist had opened up again at some point. He gave her the story as far as they had figured it out, left out the possibility that he had until recently had a half-brother. This kind of thing could make him feel sympathetic for Loki's family issues. “Just your garden-variety Dr. Frankenstein with better organization than most. I wish I could promise it won't happen again.”

She frowned. “You don't need to. I did all right.”

“Better than all right.” Bonus, Tony was going to have lots of SHIELD toys to play with that they didn't know he had; they could wait a few more weeks for the Chitauri stuff and be grateful for it. “They said you're fine, no reason to stay, so you can... come home. If you want. Or wherever.” Not that he wouldn't spend any number of nights in hospitals for her, but he was never going to be able to sleep in one.

Pepper tipped her head. “Wherever?”

“Well, the penthouse is kind of a wreck. There's plenty of other space, obviously. Thor's whole floor and whatnot. What I mean is, you can go wherever you want to. Wherever that might be.” She was staring at him, which was usually not a good thing. “I mean that this whole thing, with today, or yesterday, whichever, that wasn't, isn't about... me being possessive, and so on. I'm glad you're safe. You can do what you want. You know that, right? I mean, you generally _do_ , do what you want, I mean, but maybe this isn't, um, I don't....” If he ever did go full-on insane, a governor chip for his mouth was going to be first on the wetware augmentation list.

“You think I want to leave?”

“Is that what we've been getting around to for a month or so?”

“You think _I_ want to leave.”

“You know what, maybe this should wait until you're feeling better.” _And I've had more than two hours of sleep in three days._

“I don't think that would help. This has gone on long enough.”

“Well, that's not ominous or anything.” Tony sat down on the chair next to the bed, leaned his elbows on his knees and waited, and looked at her in case this was the last chance he got.

Pepper sighed. “I should have said something sooner. I haven't really been fair. What's bothering me is... the Chitauri attack. What did you see, out there?”

“Other than immanent planet-wide urban renewal? Stars.”

“That's all?”

“Yes.” He gave her a puzzled look in response to her searching one.

“This is going to sound weird. Do you... want to go back?”

“Well, I wouldn't like to build a summer home there.” She didn't smile, but it had been worth a try.

As the last thing he thought he was ever going to see, even Tony had to admit it had been hard to complain about the view, the infinite reaches undimmed by atmosphere. The only part that hurt was all of the things he was never going to know _what stars are these why does gravity work across the portal are those ships really alive_ the space filling up with questions as the air leaked away, and then came the new, smaller sun of the nuke going off. Thanks, Dad? The universe _did_ have a sense of humor. _Not bad_ , he had thought, and closed his eyes while he still could make the choice.

He shook off the memory. “Seriously? This is what's been bothering you?”

“Mostly that. You just look very strange, a lot of the time. Since then.”

“It was a strange thing to happen.” Maybe he had been a little more distracted than usual. Her hands were covered in gauze, scraped and raw where the splinters had been removed, so he didn't reach for one.

“I don't want to try to keep you from doing something you think is important.”

“You won't.” _You can't._ Maybe that wasn't ideal, maybe that wasn't right, but it was true. “We're _all_ part of a larger world now. There's gonna be new places to go. But I don't want to go anywhere without you.”

She studied him for a few moments and let a trace of a smile show. “Then let's go home.”

  
  


The End

(until the next plot bunny strikes)


End file.
